Contributed

A civil rights pioneer will speak at Sandhills Commu-nity College for the Ruth Pauley Lecture Series and as one of the college's special events for African-American History Month.

Ernest Green will visit the campus for most of the day on Wednesday, Feb. 20, and speak that evening at 7:30 in Owens Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.

Green made civil rights history in 1957 as one of the Little Rock Nine, the nine African-American students who desegregated the formerly all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Ark. This was following the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education that declared segregation illegal. He was the first African-American to graduate from the school.

In 1999, President Bill Clinton presented Green and the other eight students with the highest honor the United Stated gives to a civilian, the Congressional Gold Medal, for his outstanding bravery during the integration of Little Rock Central High School. They were honored with a commemorative stamp by the United States Postal Service in 2005, and in 2007 President George Bush signed an executive order authorizing the U.S. Mint to issue a $1 coin commemorating the 50th anniversary of the event.

Green went on to receive a bachelor's degree in social science and a master's in sociology from Michigan State University. He also received honorary doctorates from Michigan State University, Tougaloo College and Central State University.

Several books, movies and documentaries have been produced chronicling Green's and his eight classmates' historic year at Central High School - the most recent being the "Ernest Green Story," produced and distributed by the Walt Disney Corp.

The October 1996 issue of Black Enterprise magazine featured Green as one of the top 25 African-Americans on Wall Street, and again in the October 2002 issue as one of the top 50 African-Americans on Wall Street, and again in 2006 as one of the 75 Most Powerful Blacks on Wall Street.

Green currently serves as a partner at Matrix Advisory, an institutional asset manager. He was appointed as chairman of the African Develop-ment Foundation by Clinton. He also served as chairman of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Capital Financing Advisory Board.

Prior to Matrix, Green was the managing director of public finance for Lehman Brothers (now Barclays Capital). Green is also the former president of Ernest Green & Associates, a minority consulting firm that provided technical assistance in marketing, financial management and economic forecasting. He served as assistant secretary of labor for employment and training during the Carter administration.

He has also served as executive director of the Recruit-ment and Training Program Inc., an organization that recruits minorities for apprenticeship programs in the building trades.

Green presently serves on the board of directors of Fisk University, Quality Education for Minorities Network and Clark Atlanta University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Executive Leadership Coun-cil, and the National Associ-ation of Securities Profes-sionals (NASP), of which he served as chairman for two consecutive years. He has also served on the board of the March of Dimes Foun-dation and the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation.

He has received numerous awards, including the Urban League's Frederick Douglas Freedom Medal and the John D. Rockefeller Public Service Award.

At the age of 17, he was the youngest recipient of the NAACP's Spingard Medal. In 1957, the Boy Scouts of American honored Green and two other African-Americans for their achievement with their highest rank, Eagle Scout. In 1995, the Boy Scouts of America awarded Green the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award.